and so, in the wake of oregon, the president said to his team, look, we're losing 30,000 people a year. so it isn't just the mass murders that we see but each day on the streets of towns and cities, large and small, people are dying. fernando: now, there's a lot of polling out there that shows that there's, in some cases, a super-majority of americans supporting these kinds of measures, specifically expanded background checks. why the controversy then? valerie: well, there shouldn't be one. there really shouldn't be one. but what we have recognized in washington, all too often, is that special interests have a stranglehold on certain members of congress, and in this case it's the nra. and they spend a great deal of time, money and energy trying to ensure that we don't take reasonable steps that, quite frankly, they supported several years ago. when you ask your average law-abiding citizen who has a gun, who went through a background check, well, won't you want to make sure everyone goes through the same background check in order to keep guns out of the wrong hands? and so it's a mystery to us, other than this stranglehold that the special interests have here in washington. and so what the president has said is that we need the american people, the american people to get engaged to say that this is an important issue to them and let that be the counter weight to the special interests. fernando: yet speaker ryan has said that these actions are unconstitutional, or somehow out of order of the constitution. what's the administration's response to that? valerie: well, the attorney general is very comfortable that these fall well within the president's authority. there is no change to the statute. there are exceptions in the statute that if you are a hobbyist or selling your own inventory, those remain. what we've tried to do here is to define more clearly what it means to be in the business of selling guns, and if you are in the business, you need a license and you need to ensure that the people to whom you sell go through a background check. shouldn't matter where you sell the gun, it should matter whether you are in the business. and so, whether it's a retail store, or whether it's a gun show, or whether it's over the internet, which is a growing market right now, we want people who sell their guns, in all those venues, to license themselves and ensure that the people to whom they are selling them are law-abiding citizens. fernando: now, i'm a second amendment supporter, but at the same time, through this process i learned about the internet market, which i had no idea, in my ignorance, that you could actually buy guns through the internet. how could that have been left as a loophole? valerie: how could that be? it's such an obvious loophole to close, and the question you say to yourself is, all rright, -- right, the responsible person goes to the store and buys it, and waits three days. that's not an onerous burden to purchase a gun. and yet, anybody can go on the internet. and as the president mentioned in his remarks, in one internet site alone, over a two month period, they found that one in three people had criminal so we know that the guns are falling into the wrong hands over the internet, and so we just want to be as transparent as we can about what the rules of the road are because, frankly, most americans will follow those rules. most sellers will follow them. and if they don't, in the face of us educating them about their responsibility, then they are going to face prosecution and the attorney general has made it clear to her u.s. attorneys, the atf has made it clear to their agents that this is a priority. fernando: how concerned is the president about terrorists buying guns on the internet in an unregulated fashion? valerie: well, obviously he's very concerned, and we saw congress is unwilling to restrict guns being sold to people who are on the no-fly list. and so we want to make sure that law-abiding citizens, who are not going to do danger to themselves or to others, have access to guns. and that's what the second amendment guarantees. and all of our constitutional provisions come with some sort of reasonable protections to ensure safety. so, as the president said again of speech but you can't go into a crowded theater and cry "fire." we have freedom of religion but, yet, in a church basement or in a sikh temple or in a mosque or a synagogue, we are seeing people who are being attacked because of their religion. and so we have lots of freedoms here, like the freedom of assembly, yet you can't go to a movie theater without having it in the back of your mind what might happen. and so we want a society that is protecting our citizens, and that's what the president trying -- is trying to accomplish here, and that's what this is really all about. fernando: president obama will have more to say on his gun control initiative when he delivers his state of the union address on tuesday. >> coming up -- creating campaign ads designed to get you to the polls. are they working? and, republicans versus republicans. is there a civil war in the grand old party? plus -- >> how to win the w fernando: any candidate running for office needs to send a strong message to attract voters. and if you live in iowa, new hampshire or south carolina, you have already seen more than your share of ads. which ads are effective, and which will backfire? peter fenn, president of the fenn communications group, has the winners and losers. peter: we are seeing commercials in iowa and new hampshire. fernando: what is your take so far? peter: the closer you get to the election, the more ads you will see, going after the last-minute deciders, folks who haven't quite made up their mind, who are leaning toward one candidate or the other, and no candidate wants to be left out. so it's kind of a war of campaign ads. but i tell you, i think in this cycle ads have played a much less important role than they have in the past. fernando: and what's your peter: well, i think that the debates have gotten huge audiences. i mean, you know, you get 24 million, 25 million, 18 million people watching these debates. the coverage of the, especially the republican primary, has been very intense. you've watched donald trump go to the top of the heap and stay there without a single commercial. so he's going up in iowa and new hampshire. he throws up his hands and says, i don't know whether i am wasting my money or not. fernando: although he now has a new ad, avery controversial ad which is sort of a spectrum of people he doesn't like. i guess that would be the polite way of putting it. >> the politicians can pretend it is something else, but donald trump calls it radical islamic terrorism. peter: the usual approach with early primaries, at the beginning, is to do bio ads. a lot of candidates don't think they really need bio ads. so what they are doing is they're going right to the hot-button issues. and in this case, it's terrorism. it's immigration. despite the fact that it doesn't appear to be moroccan immigration, where he shows this moroccan footage where he implies that it's mexico. little problem with that. it's not a very clever ad, visually. if we are comparing ads visually along that genre. if you look at the ad for ted cruz, a lot more impactive. i mean, it's different, it's going catch your attention. you know, women going across in high heels, men in suits, carrying briefcases. making his point a little differently. but that's a more memorable ad. whether it works or not, i'm not sure. but now, what i think you got to do is you got to get away from stuff that's more creative, more impactive, where the visuals are very strong. fernando: and so to that point, kasich's ad, which i think is a really nice ad, in terms of what it communicates. but it also feels a little old-fashioned. >> he lived a hardscrabble life in a rusty steel town. john kasich never gives up. peter i think it's quite : old-fashioned. you see a lot of black and white footage in that ad. the shot of his parents, who were killed in a car wreck. the church where he was kind of brought up. valerie: you know, kasich, i think, compared to the others, needs a little biographical because people don't know much about him. they kind of remember, well, he's a governor. we get that. and maybe a little bit of his congressional record. he did a lot of work on the budget. but they don't really have a three-dimensional sense of so that one, and it is a 62nd ad. the version i saw which is a little longer. you can get more in it now. he's probably going to flood iowa well. he did flood new hampshire early and his numbers went up, and, sadly, i think, dipped back down. >> do not be fooled. any significant division in the republican party leads to the same awful result -- hillary rodham clinton. peter: all of them are trying to outdo one another, being anti-obama or anti-hillary clinton. the interesting thing about chris christie is he is trying to answer a charge, but he goes right off and says, who is going to be hillary clinton? -- beat hillary clinton? this is our job as republicans. it is not a bad message for fernando: he is referencing an attack from marco rubio. do people even know what he is talking about? peter: no, what i think what he's doing with that, because they may not have seen or heard much about the attack, i think he's trying to sort of pull some voters away from rubio. he's trying to say, i'm the real republican choice. i'm the conservative, moderate, reasonable guy. and not this other fellow. so he's leaving, what i would call the "crazy field," to trump and cruz and trying to solidify that sort of more middle ground. fernando: so far, super pac's are responsible for most of the ad buys seen on air, 81% last year alone. >> up next, down the stretch they come. who can carry the republican banner to victory in iowa, and in november? and -- >> healthcare for everybody is important to me >> women voters speak out, but fernando: in just three weeks, the republican candidates will have a clearer picture of where they stand with voters in iowa. as the crowded field forces candidates to tack further to the right, moderate republicans are worried that a far-right strategy today will doom the party's chances for victory in november. sarah chamberlain is president of the centrist republican group, the main street partnership. how much of the perception, because i know this is a very important issue for you and your organization, the perception of the republican party, how much has it changed since trump got into the election? if at all? sarah: it has changed, but i'm not sure if most people consider trump to be the standard-bearer of the republican party. it is kind of donald trump and then the establishment republicans, so i think donald happen often in a field, by himself. so the things that he talks about are uniquely his, and it doesn't necessarily reflect on the republican party. fernando: what do you make of the tremendous amount of resources that have been spent, primarily on tv advertising, by some of the campaigns -- bush being the most notable -- that does not seem to help too much? you could argue that it does help, because he's not at zero. but what's that dynamic about? what do you think has changed in that context? sarah: i think that super pac's that are running these ads have done a great job, but i think that politics has changed. it's become much more reality tv, and i think that they've missed that. donald trump in my opinion is like the kardashian of politics. he's out there saying stuff and doing stuff and changing things, and i think that the men and women running these super pac's are not realizing that the country has shifted and they kind of like that. they like reality tv. i mean, that's the best way to fernando: switching gears a bit, you've been working for sometime -- some time now on developing messages and attracting more women to the republican party. what are you doing exactly, and how is it working? sarah: so, we're traveling the country trying to engage women and hear from then, what their issues are, because i really want to emphasize -- which gets lost sometimes -- is that all issues are women's issues. we tend to be the care providers for our kids. we tend to be the bill payers at least on a monthly basis with our families. and we tend to be the ones who decide the health care, the education, and take care of our elderly parents. so women have issues that we care about. we've traveled the country, we've interviewed them and we've come back and introduced an agenda that's all of their concerns. it's focusing on mental health, drug addiction, 21st century cures which are hopefully helping their parents with thing that i've ever done in politics. fernando: so you're doing a great job of trying to bring people together and listen to a different message of the republican party from the center, but you've seen the stats, i've seen the stats. women, especially younger women are disproportionately orienting themselves toward the democratic party. there's no silver bullet, i'm sure. but what are the things that you think have to happen for the gop so that women break 50-50? sarah: i think exactly what we're doing. and they need to understand that there's a group of gop women and members who care about their issues and are willing to introduce legislation, support the legislation and pass bills that they really do care about. for some reason, that's getting lost in the media -- and you know, the republican party, we do care about women. we do care about the issues. there's not a war on women, and we're here to talk about that >> when we return, (donkey sound) (elephant sound) there's a big difference between making noise, (tapping sound) and making sense. (elephant sound) (donkey sound) when it comes to social security, we need more than lip service. our next president needs a real plan to keep social security strong. (elephant noise) hey candidates. enough talk. fernando: more than half of all voters in the united states are women. and for 37 years, the majority of women have voted for the democratic nominee on election day. four years ago, 55% voted for barack obama. 43% voted for mitt romney. but don't believe that women are a one-issue, one-party constituency. how do you win the women's vote? ms. clinton: if supporting women's health and women's rights is playing the gender card, deal me in. fernando: democratic candidate hillary clinton knows the high-stakes path to her party's nomination is clearly lined with women. republican candidate carly fiorina takes a different route -- ms. fiorina: i will never ask for your vote or your support because i'm a woman. fernando: but like most candidates, she's doing the math. that's because statistically, women are more likely to show up to vote on election day than men. and for many women, politics is >> the issues of access to family planning and contraception, that is incredibly important to me in this election. >> i think economic security, certainly, health, education are things that i put at the top of my list. fernando: page gardner is an expert on female voters. page: the top issues of concern for women voters are really economic issues, particularly unmarried women. they are on their own. they are struggling to make ends meet. fernando: struggling, and even more so this year, they're angry. >> i think they are spending way to much time dissing the other side rather than coming up with ideas that are going to work for the majority of americans. page: they are angry about the dysfunction, they're angry about the lack of washington to be able to get things done to improve their lives. it's really about who is getting something done in this country to improve my life and to improve my ability to take care of myself and my family? their vote? page: you really, really speak to a middle class agenda, and you speak to the hopes and aspirations of their lives. fernando: unmarried women make less money in the u.s. than married women. their numbers are growing, enough to influence the outcome of the next election. tweet me at @espuelasvox, and check in on facebook or connect with our video site, matteroffact.tv, where you can watch and share videos from all our programs. >> up next -- candidates and campaign promises. the economy rigged? well, the 15 richest americans acquired more wealth in two years than the bottom 100 million people combined. i'm bernie sanders, and i approve this message. my plan -- make wall street banks and the ultra-rich pay their fair share of taxes, provide living wages for working people, ensure equal pay for women. the middle class will continue to disappear with your help, as president, we will. fernando: some presidential candidates use logic and facts to construct their world view, but many others employ emotions and prejudices to create an alternative reality. that's why we need citizens willing to inform themselves, to think clearly, and reach conclusions based on measurable and the stakes are high. we have made some very bad choices over the last few decades. our economic policies have hollowed out the middle class, expensive wars of choice drained our resources, and chronic mismanagement of our schools has undermined the american dream. it's critical to fact-check what you hear from all the candidates. are they waging a war on truth, or are they presenting real policies that will make our nation stronger? be highly skeptical and critical of any promises made by the candidates. don't give them the benefit of the doubt. demand the truth. and that's the bottom line. i'm fernando espuelas. have a great week. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its >> axelrod: nearly a billion reasons to keep your eye on the ball tonight. the largest lot friday jackpot ever means long lines to the deadline. >> is it worth it, it is worth it because it is life changing. >> lights, cameras, capture,